Phil over Slug Industries is currently funding his new Streetscape building range on Kickstarter, looking to bring his unique scenery line on the miniature tabletop battlefields of wargamers and miniature collectors worldwide. This new Streetscape building range has been created to offer both affordable yet detailled miniature buildings allowing you to build great-looking town and cities for your wargames. The Streetscape buildings are hybrid model kits containing resin and laser cut wooden parts (along with some white metal parts) in which the laser cut wooden shell offers the sturdiness and bulk of the building while the resin parts offers excellent detail to really make these buildings shine. The range currently funding on Kickstarter features three different sized buildings being Small, Medium and Large buildings and look to be designed for World War One, Interwar, World War Two and more Modern Times. Check all details and buildings here on the Kickstarter

Today we will be taking a closer look at one of the Small building sets which includes all the parts you need to assemble one model house. The Small models of the range are approximately 170mm high, 100mm wide and 110mm deep (6.69" x 3.93" x 4.43") to give you an idea of the size. This particular set includes the laser cut wooden shell including support pieces along with the resin facades, rooftiles and chimney. As mentionned before there are also some white metal parts which will be used to close the roof ridge.

In the picture below you can see all the resin parts and metal parts included in the Streetscape Small model kit. As you can see in the picture you receive two detailled facades, one for the front and one for the back of the building along with two thin rooftile sections, the chimney and the white metal ridge pantiles. The large parts had already been basecoated when I received the pieces so won't need further cleaning, the only resin part not basecoated was the chimney which will need to be washed in warm soapy water before assembly.

I really like the look of the facades as they offer nice detail and while being commercially available they look like they were scratchbuild by yourself. Which is a feature I like as some commercially buildings can look to clean and perfect but as you can see these have plenty of character in the form of weathering, damage and slight imperfections. The same can be said of the rooftile pieces which are also offering great detail while being identical if I'm not mistaken.

The Assembly

Assembling the laser cut wooden shell of the building is quite easy as all the parts fit well and there's actually only one way you can assemble it so you can't miss. The laser cut wooden pieces are glued together using the small triangle support bits you have seen in the previous pictures offering very strong corner connection. For the glueing I have used Army Painter Super Glue as I wanted a quick construction.

To assemble the building I have actually just started with constructing one corner, connectin two walls and from there on added one more wall and so on. Untill I had finished assembling the laser cut wooden shell. You only need to make sure that each of your corners is perfectly assembled in a ninty degrees angle so you can easily glue in the last wall. This however is quite straight forward as you have the super easy support triangles and according holes in the wall sections. In the picture below you can see the support triangles being glued in the according holes to connect two wall pieces.

When the wooden shell is finished you can now glue on the facades followed by the rooftile sections and the remaining bits. When dry fitting the facades, I noticed that one of the facades was slighty warped. This issue was however quickly adressed by boiling some water and putting the piece in it for around ten - twenty seconds untill it was bendable again. When bendable you then simply bend the piece in the desired shape in this case just straightened it a bit and then attach it with some clamps to a flat piece of wood. You can do this relatively quickly, when still attached you just hold the piece under some cold running water so it cools down. Actually not sure if the last step is required but I just did it to make sure. After cooling I removed the resin piece from the wooden support and had a perfect straight piece of facade. I have taken a picture of the piece after cooling and still attached to the support which you can see below.

After straightening the facade I then just glued both facades on using Army painter Super Glue and let them dry while dry fitting the rooftiles. These rooftile sections are not very thick and were also slighly warped but I liked the way the roof looked that way. So I glued on both rooftile sections followed by the white metal ridge tiles (of which I slightly shorten two, to make a better fit). These ridge tiles only needed some minor sanding to remove some flash but really negligible. So that done I then just glued on the chimney and the building was finished.

Before I will paint this building I will just plaster the bare wooden walls with some ready made filler and then it's ready to be painted so it be used for playing Bolt action, Chain of Command and other popular wargames. Below I have added some pictures of the finished building, the miniature in the picture is a non-heroic 28mm Perry Miniature plastic figure that was found on the work bench.

The Conclusion

This unique scenery line is combining both wooden and resin components offering the best of both materials at a competitive price. To be honest I was really impressed by the character and detail of the resin parts and the sturdiness of the wooden shell which is very solid when assembled using the clever triangle support bits. The only minor issue was the slightly warped facade but I don't think that the warped facade is an issue in all sets but just wanted to mention the issue I encountered with this particular review sample.

These buildings are not available yet on the Slug Industries website as the they are currently funding on Kickstarter. In fact the Streetscape scenery line is already succesfully funded on Kickstarter here but you can still pledge and expand your wargame terrain collection with some of these excellent buildings. I would certainly recommend these nice buildings if you're looking for some characterful and detailled miniature buildings for your wargames and I'm sure you will enjoy assembling, painting and playing with these buildings for countless hours.

Disclaimer - We received this scenery for free from Slug Industries for reviewing purposes. Please note that this doesn't influence our review as we always strive to supply you with our own independent and honest opinion about the wargame products reviewed.

2 comments:

I picked up some of Slug Industries products a year or so back, and was really impressed with the quality, scale and detail, so am looking forward to this release. It will be nice to have a few more characterful buildings amongst the ones I have from a fairly popular manufacture's laser cut pre coloured mdf ones